I made one but it’s all clunky since I couldn’t find the exact screws etc.
The idea of the tiny camera embedded in it is in principle great, even better if combined with a sd slot to directly save the videos. Well I do realize this would be waay more complicated and pricey (also needing batteries or at least usb power).
In any case: day 1 buyer here 
If you can get them to the uk i’d buy a few!
Most likely we’ll just do one color, at least to start, probably something close to the red we’ve used for all our prototypes. Possible we may be able to do more options later on. And yes to some kind of simple but nice packaging!
@Bentley.Smith I see your post was deleted but addressing a couple things anyway — too early for an exact timeline, but I think ideally we’ll aim for a Kickstarter early next year, and have it in production mid-2020, shipping in time for Christmas next year. We don’t expect it to have major functional changes from the current prototype, just will work better in a handful of little ways. And yeah I agree Kickstarter bundles are a great idea!
I will buy one no matter what color you use, but I suggest white because I think it will sell the most units. The difference will not be large at first (people here will all want one), but as it spreads out to “regular” people I think the photography and aesthetics will become increasingly important. Red is actually not very popular, look at car colors (basically white or gray, then black), the colors that Apple uses for dongles/earbuds (white), etc. But you can probably escape from red any time you want with no cost, so they might become collector’s items. I only comment on color just so you are confident to stick with an unusual color like red.
Will the new magnet still work with the gopro adapter? Will the gopro adapter still be available to order from Shapeways?
Maybe, hard to say! I think the red is kind of iconic, and also matches the classic horseshoe magnet that inspired the name 
Also white I think would get dirty / scuffed a lot more easily. If it turns out to make a difference we could definitely reconsider or add more colors in the future. Guessing most won’t care all that much.
We originally made a GoPro adapter several years ago that fits I believe the GoPro 3 and 4, but after that the shape changed and we haven’t made a new one to fit more recent GoPro models. We actually removed the link from the Shapeways instructions because we didn’t want to confuse people.
This is another thing where, if we discover there’s tons of interest in a newer GoPro adapter, we can consider making it happen. May be a bit of a moot point, given how many people have smartphones with high quality cameras now (not necessarily the case ~5 years ago). We hardly ever used our GoPro, and we find the phone just works so well for this, probably the way to go for like 99% of Magnet users!
First of all we need to understand what the magnet actually is. Yes, it’s a phone mount for a guitar….but reallly it’s only a part of a tool.
Tool to understand and build your playing technique. Noone said that it will be easy, but the reality comparing to the Cracking the Code videos is really different.
Open any of the cracking the code videos and compare it with the experience when using magnet. Video shows us the ideal workflow for practicing when we see everything without a delay. Reality shows us that between filming a few second lick and watching it on a computer we need to struggle for about a minute. It’s not much but if we’re practicing - we need to see our every try to analyze it.
If wee have a 5 second long lick that we want to practice: It takes less than a minute to play it 10 times, but it would take more than 10 minutes to film every try of it,export every try to pc or mac, open it and actually analyze.
At this point i hope that you’re getting my idea.
The ideal magnet bundle should be:
1-The Magnet
2-iOS / Android Camera Client Software
3-PC/ Mac Camera server software
+(optional) small stomp box with usb interface just for shortcuts
1- i already explained
2- there are a lot of apps which allow you to use Phone as a wireless webcam.problem is that they just stream 30fps video. Magnet app should film slo-mo video(triggered by the server sofware ) and send it wirelessly to a computer app as soon as filming is finished.
And that’s basically it.
3- Computer server software is more complex.
Basic features:
-it sends start/stop recording command to a phone.
-automatically imports and opens the slo-mo video as soon as recording is finished.
Advanced features:
-Integration with Cracking the code series. All the lessons will contain video practice files specially for the magnet app. You can watch and compare your video with any other magnet footage in splitscreen mode or by merging 2 pictures*
*App should allow you to fine tune the beat and to fine tune the picture perspective.
I am afraid that the NRE (engineering costs) for apps would be huge compared to the income generated from any app sales, hence apps would not be a good investment of capital at this time… hopefully Magnets (I wish that CtC would change both the name and color, but I’m buying mine anyway) will develop an ecosystem where others will work along the lines that you suggest and eventually develop apps.
I suspect that hundreds of thousands of Magnets must be sold along with robust continuing sales before somebody will write the first app, but we will see…
Thanks for the detailed suggestions here! I agree that it would be great to have a dedicated app, and this is definitely something we’ve talked about as a possibility, and will continue to consider.
Note that you don’t have to export/transfer to a computer to watch the footage you film. You can simply pop your phone out and hit play right there on the phone. Still not as immediate as would be ideal, but much quicker and easier than transferring to computer first.
One approach for an app might be to make just an iOS app, and then send to computer (or other devices e.g. smart TV) using Airplay for playback. And maybe voice commands to control filming without having to touch the phone at all.
I like your “advanced feature” ideas here too, but thinking if we’re able to make an app at all, we’d probably keep it as simple as possible to start.
Just throwing it out there, if we sell as many Magnets as Cybertrucks, I think we can make an app happen But we may be able to at least prototype something sooner.
Disclaimer. I am not a software engineer, i have a degree in medicine, programming is an old hobby.
back in 2012when i was a poor student ii bought myself an Axe Fx II, it literally cost me everything. i had no money for foot controller. So i decided to build it myself. At this time i didn’t know anything about arduino. few months later i had my first prototype.
And in a month later it was inside a shoe box
Then in a metal box
And the latest and the tastiest - with reverceenginered stickers
The point of this story is to show that even with minimal knowledge i was able to build this kind of thing from scratch. 0 lines of code were used from different projects. If you’ll find the right person for writing the app -i am sure that the first beta could be done in less than a week.
That’s amazing.
How much did that cost you in materials, and how long did it take in total?
i guess half a year during school time, and around 80-100 eur. half of which was the price of footswitches
Oh dang yeah that’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing all the photos, super cool to see the evolution from hacky prototype to seriously legit finished product.
While we don’t have the resources of a full dev shop we definitely like getting our hands dirty figuring out how to prototype things and figure out what’s possible. We’ll see what we can do! Clearly some interest as we can see w/ some prior discussions like: Creating an app for the Magnet
For anyone interested in a Magnet app (assume mobile only for starters): what’s the number one feature you’d want to have? Voice commands for hands-free filming? Easy video upload for critique? Ways to organize your clips? We can think of a bunch of stuff that would be cool, but curious what you see as the single most essential feature.
Can the magnet be used on 8 strings or fanned fret guitars? Even if the magnet doesn’t fit I’ll still be down for planning a pre-order though.
Probably not 8-string unfortunately. With our current prototype, the max neck width it’ll fit is just under 3 inches. It’ll definitely fit 7-string but I don’t think much beyond that. It’s possible that could change slightly in the final version but I don’t think we’ll get much more expandability without increasing the size of the whole thing, which we want to avoid if we can.
Definitely want one! Bought the plans but never got around to making one
An app to go with the Magnet would be fantastic. For me the number one feature of the app is the ability to leave the phone in the magnet and send a just recorded video to a PC for immediate viewing and analysis both normal speed and slo-mo.
Being able to analyse a video without the delay of having to keep removing and replacing the phone should really improve it’s usefulness as a practice tool.
Thanks.
I second all of this. Thumb screw or super smooth action would make it much more enjoyable to use.
Got it, thanks for the feedback! Maybe some combination of voice commands on the phone + Airplay to computer or TV would be helpful here and simpler than having to have a whole separate PC companion app.
Yeah absolutely want to get much smoother action here. I think the spring mechanism is an elegant solution but ideally need it to work smoother to get the most convenient one-handed operation. Should be possible!
I was just writing in my journal that I need to get someone with 3D printing know-how to help me make a magnet in 2020. I’m ready to purchase one as soon as it becomes available.
